Monkey King Face-Off
Trip Start
May 22, 2005
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84
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Trip End
Jan 22, 2006
Jaipur,
India
Friday, November 25, 2005
The current Maharajah of Jaipur no longer has any political power, but still resides in the City Palace and commands deep respect from the locals. Most of the sites around Jaipur have something to do with the legacy of the Maharajah. The Palace of Winds, or the Hawa Mahal, is a five storey façade over looking the streets of Jaipur which was built in 1799 by the Maharajah to allow the ladies of the court to see everyday life and the passing of royal processions
01 - Trying to Cross the Street in Jaipur
.Jantar Mantar is a large complex in which the Maharajah built numerous giant scientific instruments designed to examine the heavens. The most impressive of these scientific instruments is the world's largest sundial at 30 metres in height with an accuracy to 20 seconds. The sun's shadow moves across the sundial at an exact pace of 4 metres per hour. Not the world's most convenient time piece though.
The City Palace, an expansive structure in the centre of town, is a mind-numbing collection of beautiful courtyards and buildings. The palace "guards" provided the most entertainment as they consisted of everything from dwarf guards to guards on elephants, each with their own funny gimmick to rope you into taking a picture with them for the standard tip. Within the palace walls are also two massive silver containers used to collect water which by the Maharajah's account are the largest silver containers in the world.
Outside the walls of Jaipur is the Amber Fort which was the ancient fortress of the Maharajah that predates the construction of Jaipur. The impressive fort sits on a hillside overlooking a lake and is a blend of Hindu and Muslim architecture
02 - City Palace
. We were supposed to catch an elephant ride to the gates of the Amber Fort, but all such rides had been cancelled due to last year's trampling death of a number of tourists. Apparently, some of the poorly maintained elephants had been blind! We rode rickety jeeps instead. The Amber Fort no longer has any human inhabitants and its abandoned walls are now manned by wild monkeys. Paul locked eyes with the Monkey King and after a tense stand-off, both sides nodded in mutual respect and left to battle another day.Bollywood is a phenomenon in India. The Indian version of Hollywood spits out an incredible number of these all-singing, all-dancing extravaganzas which are hungrily consumed by the Indian masses. Our guide Manu explained to us that the typical Bollywood movie mixes comedy, action, tragedy, a love story, singing and dancing into one 3 hour entertainment juggernaut. Located in Jaipur is the most famous cinema in all of India-the "palatial" Raj Mandir Cinema. We couldn't pass up the opportunity so we joined Manu at the famous cinema for a screening of "Why?" There were no subtitles, but we were able to follow the basic gist of the action.
In brief, "Why?" is about a hero who is so sickened by the death of his lover by accidental drowning that he checks himself into a mental hospital; at the hospital, much funny antics ensure; later the evil head doctor's beautiful daughter, who is also a doctor, falls in love with the hero; after much singing and dancing the hero, cured by his new love, also falls for the daughter; happiness should prevail, but the evil head doctor is so appalled by the thought of having a "crazy" son-in-law that he has the hero lobotomized; the daughter learning about this tragedy is herself driven crazy. The only thing missing was dinosaurs.
Handicrafts are also a major industry in Jaipur. We visited a carpet factory where the beautiful carpets are knotted by hand into ancient patterns passed on through the generations by song set to the musical stylings of Tom Jones (just kidding on the Tom Jones part). The Achilles heel for this system is that one tone-deaf generation could bring it all down. I guess you could always resort to rap.
